


Trapped

by Cafechan



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-01
Updated: 2012-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-30 11:01:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cafechan/pseuds/Cafechan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not his looks that bother him, but the principle behind it. The subsequent realities of it. He's a human, and he absolutely should not be, and he realizes that She must have known it would be like this from the start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trapped

**Author's Note:**

> This is old. I think I wrote it right after I beat Portal 2. Ending spoilers, sorta.

His first impression on his new body is far from a good one.  
  
When his consciousness snaps back into reality after the transfer, he's overwhelmed with the sudden sensory stimulation. He smells the stale air, and it's oppressive and claustrophobic and presses against him as if trying to shove itself up his nostrils all at once. Suddenly, he has all these weird, gangly limbs shooting this way and that, and he takes a while to coordinate them enough to drag himself anywhere, a task nowhere near as simple as following a guide rail. He admits that binocular vision is somewhat of an improvement over monocular, but he can't scan things the same way anymore. He doesn't have a database to consult on the things he sees, or on anything, really. If he's ever felt defenseless, it's now.  
  
He spends a couple of moments just poking his own hands and arms. It's not like he doesn't know how a human body works, of course, because he's observed them many times before—been carried by one on a few rare occasions, even—and he's no moron, but he just can't get over realizing  _this is how it feels_. His awe leans more on the air of shock rather than admiration. How does anyone do  _anything_  in a mess like this? He's got no rail, no database, no clear objectives, no internal flashlights. So far, all he's counted up to the advantage of this human body is a slightly wider range of vision and four—wait, no, five— freckles on his arms.  
  
He's still having trouble breathing, and he doesn't know if it's just the recycled oxygen down here or his imagination, but it feels strange and, ironically, suffocating. The air reeks of things he can't quite put descriptions to because smelling is a new feature. (He's called humans 'smelly' before, but only because he heard other ones say it, and he got the idea that it was just a reality of being human. Along with being drippy and needy and inefficient.) His tongue is disgustingly dry—he's not quite sure, but are tongues supposed to feel that way?—and swallowing feels worse than having misplaced gears grinding against each other. The pit of his stomach is lurching and threatening to upturn nonexistent contents, and he's beginning to want to cry from all these new and unpleasant sensations. (Crying, he notes, being another new and seemingly pointless function.)  
  
She puts that gun in his hand and reminds him with Her ever-serious drawl that, yes, he is in fact just as embarrassing to look at as ever, but not to worry anymore about his own pitiful existence because it's science time now, just as he promised. He's got an idea of what to do from there, and he presses through Her first testing chamber without much trouble, but every move he makes is agonizing. Movement, adrenaline, friction, pressure, impact, scent,  _just touching anything at all_. It's too much for him to think about, too many foreign sensations, too much sensory overload.  
  
Through a misplaced portal, he ends up catching a glimpse of his own visage through the fiery rings, and the sight doesn't particularly please or displease him. He doesn't really have any understanding of the human constructs of perceived physical desirability, so his own looks don't matter a great deal. His hair is sort of a frizzly, amber mess, and there's more freckles sprinkled across his face. Maybe more than he cares to count, he thinks. This aesthetic analysis is brief and rather uninteresting, as if seeing himself for the first time is something as trivial as blinking.  
  
It's not his looks that bother him, but the principle behind it. The subsequent realities of it. He's a human, and he absolutely should  _not_  be, and he realizes that She must have known it would be like this from the start. This is perhaps worse than indefinite solitude. He runs, trips, falls into the next lift and collapses into a terrible heap on the floor and never wants to get up again. Every touch is overwhelming and confusing, and he feels like he's going crazy, and he was just not meant to be like this. Being put into a human body was not a simple transfer or an upgrade, but being forced to experience things he simply was not made to understand.  
  
Sweat trickles down his nose, and he thinks about how leaky and repulsive humans are. He thinks, now he's repulsive too.


End file.
